(transcribed by Clifford Stetner)
Chapter 8
BYZANTINE LEARNING
150
…humanists and from the latter to the French and Dutch philologists of the sixteenth century, and to the English and German and finally to the American scholars of more recent times. Each age and country added something new to the common tradition, and we should like to think that the methods of research have been steadily improved and refined in the course of the centuries and that they have proved their validity also when applied to the study of languages and cultures other than those of classical antiquity.
For two reasons, then for the continuing impact of Greek literature and culture on modern Western civilization and for the impulse given to classical, philological, and historical studies-Byzantine arid Italian humanism, different and yet connected, have a lasting importance in the history of European civilization. Hence, it should be worthwhile to explore these rich and i interesting movements much further, especially in those aspects that have j not yet been properly investigated or understood.
8. Byzantine and Western Platonism in the Fifteenth Century
The history of Byzantine and Western Platonism is an important subject and one that has not been neglected by intellectual historians, but it is somewhat difficult and complicated, and many of its facets have not yet been sufficiently explored. We have a certain number of recent monographs on the major representatives of Byzantine and Italian Platonism, 1 but several lesser figures who had a significant part in the intellectual development of the period remain comparatively unknown. Moreover, we still lack a comprehensive and documented history of Renaissance Platonism, and there is no modern history of the controversy about the superiority of Plato or Aristotle. 2 In other words, we know to some extent the thought of Plethon and
151
Bessarion, of Ficino and Pico. But aside from many aspects of the thought of these authors that remain still obscure or doubtful, we do not yet know the precise links that connect them with each other or with other earlier or later thinkers, and their sources and influences are still to a large extent unknown to us. Instead of trying to give a synthesis that would seem premature at this stage, I prefer to admit the preliminary character of our knowledge, and especially of my knowledge of the subject, and to indicate as clearly as possible the problems that are still in need of further investigation.
If we read some of the textbooks of the history of philosophy, we shall usually find them saying (or at least they did so until a few years ago) that the contrast between medieval and Renaissance thought in the West may be roughly described as a contrast between Aristotelianism and Platonism. Medieval scholastic thought was dominated by "the master of those who know,'' 3 whereas the Renaissance discovered 'Plato who in that group came closest to the goal that may be reached by those whom heaven favors."4 This simple and pleasant formula has been demolished, as it happens, by the more detailed research of recent historians. We have learned that there was also during the Middle Ages a more or less continuous Platonist currents and, on the other hand, that the Aristotelian school remained very strong throughout the sixteenth century and even underwent some of its most characteristic developments during that very period.6 Yet, in this as in other cases, we should not push revisionism to the utmost extreme. Renaissance Platonism remains, after all, an established fact, and we are still confronted with the task of understanding and. explaining it. Cusanus, Ficino, and Pico were the most vigorous thinkers of the fifteenth century, and their influence during their own time and during the subsequent centuries was powerful, although it is somewhat hard to describe, especially if we think exclusively in terms of academic and institutional traditions. Moreover, when we use the term ''Platonism," we should not treat it as a fixed and rigid category. We must realize that under this label we may expect to find in each instance a different combination of ideas and doctrines that remains to be identified and explained. We also should admit that the name and authority of Plato covers at the same time the vast tradition of ancient and later Neoplatonism and that for the 'very reason that people considered Platonism as a kind of perennial philosophy (the term was invented by a Platonizing bishop of the sixteenth century, Agostino Steuco),7 they were also tempted to associate with it many philosophical, theological, and scientific ideas that had a very different origin.
If we wish to understand the development of Platonism during the Renaissance, we must go back for a moment to Roman antiquity and to the Latin Middle Ages. We find traces of Platonic and Platonist influences in some of the philosophical and rhetorical works of Cicero, who even translated a part of Plato's Timaeus. 8 The philosophical treatises of Apuleius are among the most important preserved sources for that school of ancient philosophy which has recently come to be known as Middle Platonism.9 Apuleius was also the reputed translator of the dialogue Asclepius, the only complete source of Hermetism known to Western readers throughout the Middle Ages. 10 In late antiquity, the knowledge of Plato was strengthened by Calcidius' partial translation and commentary of the Timaeus, a work whose tremendous influence we can appreciate only now that we have an adequate critical edition of it. 11 The Neoplatonism of Plotinus and his school had its repercussions also in the Latin West. Aside from Victorinus and Macrobius,12 we must mention especially St. Augustine, whose philosophical thought was much more deeply influenced by Plato and Plotinus than some of his recent theological interpreters are inclined to admit,13 and Boethius, whose widely read Consolation of Philosophy shows the impact of the same school. Compared with these strong elements of Platonism, the traces of Aristotle in the philosophical literature of Latin antiquity are rather meager. We note primarily a certain acquaintance with Aristotelian logic in Cicero and Augustine and, above all, in Boethius, who translated the first two treatises of the Organon, along with the Neoplatonist Porphyry's Introduction to the first treatise, and probably also the remaining parts of the same collection. 14
Thus, we may easily understand why medieval philosophy and theology up to the twelfth century followed a strong Neoplatonic trend, whereas the influence of Aristotle was felt almost exclusively in the field of logic, especially after all treatises of the Organon had become generally known. Yet, the twelfth century also saw the beginning of that intellectual revolution that was to bear fruit during the following two centuries. In the vast number of philosophical and scientific texts which were then translated for the first time from Greek and Arabic into Latin, IS the most important philosophical texts were those of Aristotle and his commentators. Thus, the West acquired the entire, or almost the entire, Corpus of Aristotle's preserved writings, along with many of their commentaries. When the new universities in the thirteenth century introduced a systematic instruction in the philosophical disciplines, and especially in logic and natural philosophy, the writings of Aristotle were naturally adopted as the main textbooks, a function for which they
152
153
were eminently suitable because of the completeness of their coverage and the precision and consistency of their method and terminology. The Aristotelianism of the universities, as it developed in the thirteenth and four1$; tee nth centuries and continued, although with gradually diminishing importance, through the Renaissance down to the eighteenth century, was not so much a compact system of uniform doctrines as a diversified tradition of teaching based on a common terminology and a common set of topics and problems.
The translators of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did not entirely forget the writings of the Platonist school. There were translations of Plato's Meno and Phaedo by the Sicilian Henricus Aristippus and several translations of Proclus by the Aemish Dominican William of Moerbeke, 16 translations which had a demonstrable impact on the mystical writers and even on Thomas Aquinas. 17 But without forgetting these exceptions, it remains a basic fact that the academic and scientific philosophy of the Latin West, during the later Middle Ages was dominated by the writings of Aristotle in a manner that had its precedent among the Arabs but was entirely different from the traditions of Greek and Roman antiquity and, as we shall see, of the Byzantines.
The preoccupations of the new humanist movement that asserted itself in contrast to the scholastic tradition were in part literary and scholarly, to be sure, but in part also philosophical and, especially, moral. With Petrarch the rebellion against scholasticism took the form of praising Plato above Aristotle, although Plato and his works were still comparatively unknown. This attitude appears not only in the Triumph of Fame from which I previously quoted a few lines, 18 but also in the treatise On His Own and Other People's Ignorance that was based on a controversy Petrarch had with some friends in Venice. 19 In this, as in so many other ways, we may call Petrarch a prophet of the later Renaissance who opened the way, as it were, that was to lead to the Plato translations of Bruni and of other humanists and to Ficino's first complete translation of Plato's works. 20
But this new interest in Plato and his works did not turn toward the Latin editions of antiquity or the early Middle Ages, but rather toward Byzantium, where the original texts of Plato and of his school had been preserved, and studied during those long centuries when they had remained largely unknown in the West. Petrarch already received from the Orient a Greek manuscript containing some dialogues of Plato, and this was probably the first Greek manuscript of Plato that came to the West since ancient Roman times. 21
154
When the teaching of Greek in the West received its first lasting impetus from Manuel Chrysoloras, 22 some of its first fruits were the Plato translations made by his pupils, especially that of the Republic by Uberto Decembrio and that of the Apology, Crito, Gorgias, and other works by Leonardo Bruni. 23 When the Byzantine Platonist Gemistos Plethon came to the Council of Ferrara and Florence in 1438 and 1439, he aroused so much interest for Platonic philosophy among the Italian humanists whom he met that Marsilio Ficino was able to say several decades afterwards that it was the impression made by Plethon on Cosimo de' Medici that led to the founding of his own Platonic Academy and to the revival of Platonism brought about by the activities of that Academy. 24
These well-known facts prompt us to enquire about the fate of the Platonic writings and of the Platonic and Neoplatonic tradition; in medieval Byzantium. Many details of the history of this tradition are still obscure, but a few facts may be easily summed up. When the Neoplatonic school of Athens, one of the last intellectual centers of ancient paganism, was closed by Justinian in 529, Simplicius and some of his colleagues went to Persia. Yet, it would be wrong to assume that these events marked the end of Platonism in the Byzantine world. 25 Simplicius returned after a short while to Greece, and most of his extant writings were composed after his return. Moreover, the Christian writers of the Greek East had absorbed for several centuries a strong dose of Platonist thought, as may be easily shown in the writings of Gement and Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and the so-called Dionysius the Areopagite. We also know for sure that at least from the ninth century on Plato's works were copied, read, and studied in Constantinople and in the other cultural centers of the oriental empire. From that period on, the study of Plato and also of Aristotle remained an integral part of the Byzantine scholarly or, if we wish, humanist tradition. That is, Plato was read and studied together with the poets and prose writers of classical antiquity. This seems to have been the type of scholarship that characterized the work of Archbishop Arethas for whom one of the earliest extant manuscripts of Plato was copied. 26
A Platonism of a more philosophical and speculative kind appears in the eleventh century with Michael Psellos, a man of considerable learning and influence.27 He attempted a kind of synthesis between Neoplatonic philosophy and Christian theology that found many successors among the Byzantine scholars of subsequent centuries. Following the precedent of Proclus, Psellos included as a part of the Platonic tradition the writings attributed to
155
Hermes Trismegistus and the Chaldaic Oracles. The Corpus Hermeticum, as it has come down to us in Greek, is perhaps an edition or anthology due to Psellos, and also the collection of Chaldaic Oracles as we have it goes back to Psellos, who added a commentary to it. 28 This commentary was known to Ficino, who also translated part of Psellos' treatise On Demons, and to Francesco Patrizi, and it was printed in the sixteenth century. 29
Among the Byzantine theologians we encounter a strong anti-Platonist current, yet the detailed polemic against Plotinus and Proclus, as we find it in the writings of Isaac Sebastocrator, Nicolaus of Methone, and Nicephoros Chumnos, presupposes a certain popularity of the Neoplatonic doctrines among their contemporaries. Chumnos' work against Plotinus was still copied in the fifteenth century, although the name of the author was usually distorted.30 Nicolaus of Methone's critical notes on Proclus were known to Ficino, and Ficino's manuscript of this work, with his Latin translation, has been rediscovered recently. 31 Finally, the writings of Isaac Sebastocrator against Proclus have been recently utilized to recover some important fragments of three lost theological works of Proclus that had been known up to , that moment only through the Latin versions of William of Moerbeke. 32
On the other hand, it would be quite wrong to assume that the Aristotelian tradition was lacking in strength among the Byzantines. The vast diffusion of Aristotle's writings among the Byzantines has been recently illustrated by a census of his Greek manuscripts.33 There were important Byzantine commentators on Aristotle, such as Michael of Ephesus, Eustratius of Nicaea, and others, 34 and some of these Byzantine commentaries were translated .' into Latin during the Middle Ages or the Renaissance and thus exercised some influence on Western scholastic Aristotelianism.35 Yet, Byzantine Aristotelianism, unlike its Arabic and Western counterparts, was never separated from the study of rhetoric or of the ancient poets and orators, and in most instances it was not even opposed to Platonism. If we consider the major Byzantine philosophers from Johannes Italos to the scholars of the fourteenth century, we encounter in most instances a combination of Aristotelian logic and physics with Platonist metaphysics, a combination that goes back to the ancient Neoplatonists and their Aristotelian commentaries. 36
It is often asserted that the philosophical and theological tradition of the Byzantine East was predominantly Aristotelian or anti-Platonist I have the impression that these statements are based to a large -extent either on Western analogies or on certain polemical positions that appeared among the
156
Byzantines only in the fifteenth century. I am inclined to think that the exclusive Aristotelianism of some Byzantine thinkers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was due to Western influences which began to become important during that very period. Among the Latin authors translated into Greek at that time, we find not only Cicero and Ovid, Augustine and Boethius, but also Thomas Aquinas.37
It is against this background that we must understand the work of a thinker who was celebrated by his pupils and contemporaries as another Plato and who occupied in relation to the mature Platonism of the Western Renaissance a position similar to that of the last Byzantine philologists in relation to the Italian humanists: Georgios Gemistos Plethon. 38 He lived approximately from 1360 to 1452 and spent the greater part of his later life in Mistra, the capital of the despots of Morea, where he served as counselor to the reigning princes and also gave instruction to some private pupils. He tried to strengthen the Byzantine Empire by a political reform based on ancient Greek models. According to the testimony of several contemporary enemies, which has been accepted by most recent scholars, Plethon also planned to restore the pagan religion of Greek antiquity. In the preserved fragments of his chief work, the Laws. he speaks at length of the ancient deities and their worship.39 Yet, the work was destroyed after Plethon's death by his enemy Scholarios, who preserved only these paganizing passages in order to justify his action, and I suspect that the complete text of the work. might have suggested an allegorical and less crude interpretation of the same passages. The part Plethon took in the Council of Florence, his theological opposition to the Union of the Greek and Latin Churches, and, finally, the unqualified admiration shown for Plethon by his pupil Cardinal Bessarion tend to cast some doubt on the supposed paganism of Plethon.
On the other hand, Plethon always maintained a strict separation between his philosophy and Christian theology and never tried to harmonize them. In his extant writings he professes to be a convinced follower of Plato and his philosophy, and he often praises the Neoplatonic philosophers, especially Proclus by whom he was much influenced. He also likes to cite the early Oriental and Greek sages, especially. the writings attributed to the Pythagoreans, and the so-called Chaldaic Oracles, which he apparently was the first to attribute to Zoroaster and on which he wrote a commentary. 40 His knowledge of the Orphic and Hermetic writings seems to be established, although it appears less prominently in his writings, and the precedent of Proclus and Psellos would be sufficient to make such a knowledge plausible.
157
Plethon cites the Stoics with favor but is strongly opposed to the Skeptics and especially to Aristotle. This anti-Aristotelianism is by no means typical of the Byzantine tradition; and since Plethon's famous treatise on the difference between Aristotle and Plato was composed during his stay in Italy and for his Italian friends,41 I am inclined to interpret Plethon's anti-Aristotelianism as a reaction against the exclusive Aristotelianism which he encountered among the Latin theologians and which to him must have appeared excessive.
Among the many characteristic points on which Plethon considers Plato to be superior to Aristotle, he insists on the reality of universals and ideas, on the divine origin of the world, and on the immortality of the soul. He also criticizes Aristotle's description of the moral virtues as means between two opposite vices, and he finally insists that all events are due to necessary causes, defending also in his treatise On Fate an extreme determinism that sounds more Stoic than Platonic.42 We may note in Plethon's Platonism a strongly rationalistic character and the apparent absence of that mystical or spiritualistic element that is . so prominent and central in the thought of the ancient Neoplatonists and of many Renaissance Platonists.
Plethon's treatise on the differences of Plato and Aristotle inaugurated the famous controversy on the relative superiority of Plato and Aristotle that continued for several decades among the Byzantine and later among some Western scholars, a controversy that has been given an almost exaggerated importance in some historical accounts of the fifteenth century. However, the significance of this controversy should not be denied. If we disregard for the moment some discussions of special problems involved in the controversy, the first frontal attack against Plethon's treatise was composed by Scholarios around 1443.43 It is a point by point defense of Aristotle against Plethon that shows a very detailed knowledge of the Aristotelian writings and emphasizes the agreement between Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology. I am not inclined to attribute this exclusive and theological Aristotelianism of Scholarios to a supposed Byzantine theological tradition, as some historians have done, but rather to his obvious dependence on Western thought, and especially on Thomism. We know that Scholarios was more learned in Latin theology than in the Byzantine traditions of philosophy and philology, and his great admiration for Aquinas is documented by his numerous translations of his writings.44 These facts are easily overlooked because in his later years Scholarios adopted a theological position hostile to the union with the Latin Church. This typically scholastic and
158
BYZANTINE LEARNING
Western attitude of Scholarios appears in the beginning pages of Scholarios' treatise, where he speaks with contempt of Plethon's Italian friends who are interested in Homer and Vergil, Cicero and Demosthenes and who hence admire Plato for his literary talent and are unable to judge the philosophical merit of Aristotle.45 In this passage we find the typical Italian contrast between scholasticism and humanism translated into Greek. Plethon replied to Scholarios about 1449 in a treatise in which we note, among other things, the interesting remark that the basic agreement between Plato and Aristotle which Scholarios had attributed to the ancients appears only in Simplicius, who attempted to combine the doctrine of the two philosophers against that of the Christian Church. 46
Aside from the controversy between Plethon and Scholarios, there was before and after the death of Plethon a discussion of more specific points of doctrine, such as the concept of substance or the doctrine of fate. In addition to Plethon and Bessarion, Theodore Gaza, Michael Apostolis, Andronicus Callistus, and several other Greek scholars participated in this discussion.47 Most of their treatises were written in Italy but in the Greek language. They can now be read in recent editions, but no detailed history of the debate has yet been written, and I cannot enter into any further details.
We must mention the treatise by George of Trebisond, Comparationes philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis. which was written in Latin after Plethon's death, perhaps in 1455, and printed in the sixteenth century.48 This work was much more violent than that of Scholarios in its doctrinal and personal attacks against Plethon and Plato himself, and it defended the superiority of Aristotle over Plato on all points, and especially his agreement with Christian theology. This attitude of Trapezuntius is rather strange when we consider his life and training.49 He came at an early age from Crete to Italy, attended the school of Vittorino da Feltre in Mantua, and thus combined a Latin humanist education with his Byzantine background. He became a bilingual scholar, taught Greek in Venice for some time, made Latin translations from the Greek, especially of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Cyril, and Eusebius, but also of Plato's Laws and Parmenides. and composed letters and treatises in Latin, including influential handbooks of logic and of rhetoriC.50 His translations and treatises show a certain amount of interest in philosophy, to be sure, but his preparation was by no means theological or scholastic. Since he was involved in many controversies with other scholars, " we might look for the motivation of his anti-Platonic treatise in his personal relations with Plethon's school. Perhaps he was also displeased with Plato's hostile attitude towards rhetoric and poetry, an attitude that for a humanist with a rhetorical training must have been difficult to swallow.
159
Trapezuntius' treatise provoked several answers, and it provided the occasion for Cardinal Bessarion to compose his great treatise In calumniatorem Platonis. This work, which was repeatedly revised by its author, was probably written between 1458 and 1469, first in Greek and then in a Latin version that was printed in 1469.51 Bessarion not only defends Plato's life and doctrine against the attacks of Trapezuntius, but he also describes Plato's contributions to the various fields of learning and then presents Plato's metaphysical doctrines with an emphasis both on their intrinsic merits and on their agreement with Christian theology. Bessarion treats Aristotle with great respect and tends to harmonize him with Plato rather than to criticize him. He often cites the Latin theologians, especially Augustine, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. The general character of the work is apologetic rather than philosophical, but it had the great merit of presenting to Latin scholars for the first time a broad and balanced, although not always accurate, picture of Plato's doctrine, based on a thorough knowledge of his writings and of his ancient commentators. The work had a wide circulation, being among the first books printed in Italy,52 and was enthusiastically received 'by several Greek, Italian, and French scholars whose letters have been preserved. 53 Like Trapezuntius, Bessarion combined a Latin humanist culture with a Byzantine training; and since he was a Cardinal of the Roman Church, his published opinions were bound to carry great weight and authority. Moreover, he was a patron of numerous Greek and Italian scholars who were ready to defend and support his work.
The famous controversy on Plato and Aristotle did not quite end with Bessarion's work but continued for some time even after its publication. Bessarion's influence may be felt not only in Giovanni Andrea de' Bussi's preface to Apuleius 54 and in Perotti's rebuttal of another lost work of Trapezuntius, 55 but in a series of treatises that are still unknown and unpublished by Dof111Z10 Caldenm, Fernando of Cordoba, and, Andreas Contrarius. In another treatise that is still largely unpublished, Trapezuntius' son Andreas tries to defend his father's position against Fernando of Cordoba. 56
To the sixteenth century already belongs the unpublished treatise against Trapezuntius by the Augustinian Hermit Ambrosius Flandinus, 57 a prolific author who also composed polemical treatises against Pomponazzi and Luther and voluminous commentaries on several works of Plato.
160
We may find a last repercussion of the controversy, and even of Plethon's work, in the anti-Aristotelian polemic of an influential philosopher of the late sixteenth century who had received an excellent training in Greek and who spent a part of his life in Padua, in Venice, and in the Greek territories of Venice: Francesco Patrizi. 58
In conclusion, I should like to discuss briefly the chief representatives of Western Platonism during the fifteenth century-Cusanus, Ficino, and Pico. They took no active part in the debate on Plato and Aristotle of which we have spoken, and a large part of their thought was either original, or may be traced to classical or medieval Western sources. Yet, we cannot conclude our discussion without mentioning the more or less obvious connections that link these Western Platonists with their Byzantine predecessors and contemporaries, and especially with Plethon and Bessarion.
It is not possible to reduce the thought of Cusanus, complex and original as it is, under the simple label of Platonism, but it is evident from his doctrines and quotations and from the content of his library that he was much attracted by Plato and his school. S9 The influence of Augustine and also that of the Areopagite and of Proclus on Cusanus' thought was decisive, and he stated explicitly that he discovered his doctrine of learned ignorance during his return from Constantinople. It now appears, however, that his knowledge of Greek was rather limited. We know little about his personal relations with Byzantine scholars except for his friendship with Bessarion, of which we have several testimonies, and the fact that other Byzantine scholars such as Athanasius of Constantinople dedicated to him a few translations of Greek works into Latin. 60 Yet, Cusanus was surrounded by Italian humanists who were Greek scholars, especially Giovanni Andrea de Bussi, Bishop of Aleria, and Pietro Balbo, Bishop of Tropea, who belonged to his inner circle. We have learned rather recently that Plato's Parmenides and Proclus' Platonic Theology were translated for Cusanus, the former by Trapezuntius and the latter by Pietro Balbo, 61 and I discovered a Latin translation of Plethon's De Jato by Johannes Sophianos that was made for Cusanus and apparently formed a part of his personal library. 62
Whereas for Cusanus Platonism was an important part of his background, it constituted for Marsilio Ficino the very center of his work and thought. His Latin translation of Plato made the entire Corpus of Plato's dialogues available to Western readers for the first time, and hence it must be recorded as a major event in the history of Platonism and of Western thought. To this translation we must add his introductions and commentaries, among which the commentary on the Symposium was especially famous and influential;
161
his translation and interpretation of Plotinus, which introduced this important thinker to the Western world; and his translations of various writings of other Neoplatonists such as Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus, and of several pseudo- Platonic writers such as Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Orpheus, and Pythagoras. Ficino also presented Platonic philosophy, as he understood it, in his Platonic Theology and in his letters, and he taught it in the courses and discussions of his Platonic Academy. We know from several statements in his writings that he considered the revival of Platonism as a task assigned to him by divine providence. 63
If we ask what part, if any, Byzantine influences had in this revival of Platonism, we may give at least a partial answer to this question. Ficino himself states in the preface to his version of Plotinus (1492) that Cosimo de' Medici during the Council of Florence had heard some lectures by Plethon and was so deeply impressed by them that he conceived the idea; of founding a Platonic Academy in Florence, a task for which he later chose Ficino when the latter was still young. 64 Owing to Ficino's manner of speaking, I hesitate to accept this story in as literal a sense as has been done by many historians, but there is a nucleus of truth in it, and Ficino surely intended to establish a historical link between his own work and that of Plethon. As a matter of fact, the passage is not completely isolated in the work of Ficino. He mentions Plethon in at least four other places, and one of them is of special interest since it says that Averroes misunderstood the thought of Aristotle because he did not know any Greek.6s In an early preface of ten Platonic dialogues to Cosimo (1464), Ficino states that Plato's spirit flew from Byzantium to Florence.66 We have recently learned that Ficino owned and partly copied in his own hand the Greek text of some of Plethon's writings.67 I also found in a manuscript an anonymous Latin translation of Plethon's commentary on the Chaldaic .Oracles and have some reason for attributing this translation to Ficino. 68 There are other traces of Byzantine influence in the work of Ficino. He copied with his own hand Traversari's translation of Aeneas of Gaza 69 and later translated a work of Psellos. 70 He corresponded with Bessarion and may have visited him, highly praised his work In calumniatorem Platonis, and included this work in a list of Platonist writings that he sent to his German friend Martin Prenninger. 71 When we compare the works of Ficino with those of Plethon and Besarion, however, we find few close similarities and a great discrepancy in their sources, problems, and intellectual interests.
162
Ficino certainly agrees with Plethon in his historical conception that there was an ancient tradition of pagan theology that goes back beyond Plato to Pythagoras and the Chaldaeans, but Ficino may have derived this conception directly from Proclus rather than from Plethon. Yet, if it is true that Plethon was the first to attribute the Chaldaic Oracles to Zoroaster, Ficino would show in this matter his dependence on Plethon, for he often cites the Oracles with great respect and always treats them as the work of Zoroaster. Ficino's Platonism agrees with that of Plethon in the theory of ideas and in the doctrine of immortality, but I am inclined to think that these concepts are more central and more elaborate in Ficino than in Plethon. Ficino certainly rejects Plethon's fatalism, and since he emphasized the harmony between Platonic philosophy and Christian theology, he was far removed from the pagan tendencies attributed to Plethon. On this point, as well as in his comparatively tolerant attitude toward Aristotle, Ficino rather agreed with Bessarion. But unlike Bessarion, Ficino was not interested in attributing to Plato the specific doctrines of the various elementary and philosophical disciplines or of dogmatic theology. Vice versa, some of the fundamental teachings of Ficino'_ Platonism, such as the central position of man in the hierarchy of the universe., the spiritual experience of the contemplative life, or the doctrine of Platonic love, apparently did not occupy a significant place in the Platonism of his Byzantine predecessors.
If we pass from Ficino to Pico, the links with Byzantine Platonism become far less direct; for certainly Pico's scholastic training, which he received at Padua and Paris, his Averroism, and his enthusiasm for Hebrew theology and for the Cabala separate him much more decidedly than Ficino from the humanist tradition of Byzantine Platonism, and especially from Plethon.72 But the famous project to establish a harmony between Plato and Aristotle as well as between their schools may be compared to a certain extent with the attitude of Bessarion.
When we proceed from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, we notice some strongly anti-Aristotelian tendencies that come to a climax in the work of Francesco Patrizi and that may be connected more or less directly with the work of Plethon. Yet, the prevalent form in which the sixteenth century received the heritage of Platonism was that of Ficino and of Pico. The function of that Platonism consisted in establishing a kind of rational metaphysics beside, rather than against, dogmatic theology and empirical science. The Platonist conceptions that were most popular in the sixteenth century were the doctrines of the contemplative life, of immortality, of the dignity of man, and of Platonic love. The historical conception of ancient theology
163
found expression in the perennial philosophy of Augustinus Steuchus, which continued a notion derived from Proclus and Plethon and more directly from Ficino and Pico. Yet, Steuco's attempt to harmonize Platonism with Christian theology and even with Aristotelian science was closer to the attitude of Bessarion. It is the same attitude which we encounter in Raphael's Stanze, where the School of Athens is placed in front of the Disputation on the Sacrament and where Plato and Aristotle together occupy the center in a symbolic representation of secular philosophy.
Before concluding, I should like to correct a misunderstanding to which my position has sometimes given rise. I am convinced that the Platonism of the fifteenth century, as well as its humanism, were intellectual movements . of great importance and some originality, but I never meant to give the impression that the intellectual, life of the fifteenth century, or of the Renaissance in general, can be understood exclusively in terms of humanism and Platonism. There were also the powerful traditions of Aristotelian philosophy, of theology, of law, and of the various scientific disciplines, not to _Ąpeak of the popular literature, the arts, and the religious, political, and economic life of the period. On the other hand, if we focus our attention on humanism and on Platonism alone, we notice in them a great variety of original and traditional elements. And among. the traditional elements, great importance must be attributed to the influence of ancient and medieval Latin authors. I do not wish to deny any of these points even by implication have merely tried in this paper, according to its chosen topic, to emphasize the fact which I believe cannot be denied, that the Italian Platonism of the Renaissance, just as Renaissance humanism, received some important impulses from the Byzantine tradition. It was fortunate that Byzantine culture at the moment of its tragic end was able to transmit to the modern Western and the heritage of its thought, as well as of its scholarship and of its books, along with the ideas and texts which it had received from ancient jtce and which it had preserved for the future through a period of nearly a thousand years.